Aquaponics - Strawberry pollination

It seems strawberries have something in common with their arch-enemy, the snail. They seem to reproduce in the same wacky manner, except in the case of the strawberry, there is less stabbing with calcium daggers involved. But they do carry all the reproductive tackle to be self reliant.

A strawberry flower looks like this.

It's not so bad small like this, but for some reason full size and at its full resolution, this photo makes my eyes hurt.

In this photo we see a close up of the strawberry in development. This one is around 6 mm in diameter, and sits in the centre of the flower. The mass in the centre "C" is what eventually becomes the yummy bit.

"A" is the boy bit that from what I gather, supplies the pollen. I think you can see pollen on in the picture.

"B" is the girl bit and is the actual fruit. The thing we eat is a fruit holder. The actual fruit surround the seed, and are the bits we would call seeds on the ripe strawberry. This are the dried outer shell of the fruit, that contains the seed.

I tried growing some strawberries from seed and bought two packets and planted them all. Not one germinated even though I followed the directions to the letter even to the point of heating the seed germination hot house they were planted in. I e-mailed the company and they asked for my phone number, but never rang me. I think they secretly know their product doesn't work.

Not to worry.

So it seems a strawberry is self pollinating and has all the required bits on each fruit. All that's required is a little breeze or a bug or perhaps just some luck. I run a small computer cooling fan in the glass house to keep the air circulating and perhaps the more recent strawberries are being pollinated by the breeze, or my rummaging around from time to time. The older original strawberries grew before the grow house was up but tended to grow lying down close to the ground. Perhaps they were just too shielded from the breeze. The latest arrivals have overtaken the originals, and tend to grow up taller. This might be why I haven't lost any of these ones, as it might just be as simple as being exposed to the slight breeze from the fan.